Quil Hartwood-Lemons is a New York-based photographer and artist whose work tenderly reimagines the intersections of Blackness, queerness, masculinity, and kinship. Raised by a mother who had him at 14 and went on to earn a master’s in nursing and open her own clinic, Lemons credits her with teaching him to believe in himself, and that ethos runs through every frame he makes.

He came to prominence in 2017 with GlitterBoy, a series in which he dusted Black men with glitter to challenge the stigmas placed on their bodies, and has since built a visual language that moves fluidly between the intimate and the iconic. In 2021, he became the youngest photographer to create the lead image for the cover of Vanity Fair, shooting Billie Eilish for the magazine’s March issue, who he had first messaged on SoundCloud six years earlier, convinced she was destined for stardom.

His commercial clients include Burberry, Calvin Klein, Givenchy, Gucci, Moncler, Nike, and Valentino, and his editorial work has appeared in Allure, i-D, The New York Times, Vogue, W, and Vanity Fair. He also shot Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty Pride campaign.

His work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, and Hannah Traore Gallery, and he was included in The New Black Vanguard, the landmark book on photography between art and fashion.